


cupcakes, ninja fighting, and a dead lizard.

by orphan_account



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 04:14:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kris didn't know what he was thinking when he volunteers to host a six year old's birthday party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cupcakes, ninja fighting, and a dead lizard.

Kris didn't know what he was thinking when he volunteers to host a six year old's birthday party.

But it's Junmyun's kid, and when his boyfriend gets an urgent message from his manager telling him to go to his office twenty minutes before the party starts, Kris offers to take it over; mainly because he was afraid that Junmyun was going to go into cardiac arrest if he didn't stop freaking out over "ruining his son's birthday".

"Are you sure about this?" Junmyun stands at the door, hesitant, with one hand on the doorknob. He glances at his son, Zitao, who is excitedly bouncing a balloon around the living room. 

"Absolutely," Kris reassures. "Zitao and I get along great, don't we?"

"Yeah, but the other kids. Can you really handle five of them at once?" Junmyun looks up at his giant sized boyfriend, face full of doubt.

Kris shrugs. "Don't know until I try, right?"

That's good enough for Junmyun, because he needs to get to the office soon before his manager roasts him. So, after a peck on the cheek from both Kris and Zitao, he heads out; leaving the two alone.

"Why did Daddy leave?" Zitao asks, looking up at the other.

Kris bends down, hands on his knees, to reach Zitao's eye level. "Because he has to work. But don't worry, I'm here." He gives a gentle smile.

"But Daddy said you don't know anything about kids."

Kris's smile twitches but he manages to keep it up as he straightens up to his full height again, and with forced laughter he pats Zitao's head. "You're so adorable. Now go do something."

And Zitao obeys, running off. For the next ten minutes, he jumps around in the living room, flipping his wushu stick he got as an early birthday present. Kris stays in the kitchen, sneaking a bowl of ice cream and praying the kid doesn't break a lamp or the brand new flat screen.

The first time the doorbell rings, Zitao answers it while screaming at the top of his lungs that his party guest was finally here. Kris could already feel a headache forming.

It's Luhan, a tiny kid with a bad haircut; which his mother apologizes for and says he gave it to himself. She leaves after giving Kris her cell number, which he balls up and pockets. He knew he was handsome but didn't the woman know he was taken? Jeez.

"Where's my present?" Zitao demands immediately after she steps out the door. 

"Zitao, that's rude," Kris intervenes but Luhan doesn't seem too bothered by it.

"Here," he says, and pulls a lizard out his front shirt pocket. 

Not just any lizard, though. 

A dead one. 

That was in the process of decaying and gave off the worst scent Kris had ever smelled.

He spends the next four minutes trying to wrestle the lizard from Luhan's hands; to be so small he had an amazing grip. It didn't help that Zitao was yelling, " _IT'S **MY** PRESENT_!" over and over while all of this was happening.

By the time he got the lizard, the ache in Kris's head had intensified. 

After he tosses the lizard out the kitchen window, he decides to calm the two sulking boys with some ice cream. 

The next two kids, Jongdae and Minseok, are cousins that both live down the street and arrive together. To Kris's relief, their present is wrapped up in a party bag and seems free of any rotting reptiles. He gets them ice cream as well, and by now the whole pint is gone. So no ice cream for the party, then.

Yixing is the last one to come, also without a lizard. His mother gives Kris her number too, which he pockets as well. He just cannot believe these women today.

By then, the other four had finished their ice cream and was in the living room playing around. Kris leads Yixing, his body already starting to ache with exhaustion.

He walks in to find Zitao and Jongdae engaged in a game of "ninja fighting"; Zitao with his stick and Jongdae with a poker from the fireplace. They were dangerously close to the flat screen.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Kris snatches the poker from Jongdae's hands. "Let's do ninja when we go outside."

"Let's go outside now, then!" Zitao grabs onto Kris's hand, pulling on it. Jongdae, giggling, mimicks his action.

"WHY IS HE HERE?" 

Kris, surprised by the sudden outburst from behind him, pulls away from Zitao and Jongdae's weak tugging to turn around to see what was happening _now_.

"Why is Yixing here??" Luhan repeats, a finger pointed towards the other boy. "I don't like him!"

"That's not nice," Kris says.

"He's my ex-boyfriend! He stole my Power Ranger at school!"

"I did not!" Yixing finally retaliates. "You ate my brownie!"

Kris blinks. "You're both too young for this. Knock it off." He flicks Luhan's forehead with a finger, to which he "owww!"s at as he rubbed the spot.

"Okay! Let's go outside," he announces and he's answered with a chorus of yays. He figures if he got them out the house and into the spacious yard, they'd be less annoying. "Line up."

For once, they obey and line up in the center of the living room with only some mild shoving. Kris counts them, naming them one by one in his head. He thinks they're all ready to go until he realizes there's only four kids.

"Where's Minseok?" he asks. The others respond by shrugging. Obviously going outside to play was more important than their suddenly missing friend.

So Kris freaks out for a whole minute, running hands through his hair and pacing around the living room thinking about how the hell he could have lost a kid so easily. The image of his life crumbling flashes in front of his eyes and he lets out a strangled cry just as Minseok walks into the living room, a cupcake that was meant to be eaten with the already gone ice cream in one hand. 

Kris wants to choke him.

He practically shoves the kids into the huge front yard, barely telling them to stay out of traffic while he takes aspirin. 

When he comes back, Zitao and Jongdae has resumed their ninja game, this time with Yixing and tree sticks. Luhan chases around a clearly frightened Minseok, screaming that he had claimed him as his next boyfriend. Kris sits down on the door step, leaning back onto his elbows.

It's going pretty well for a few minutes. Then Jongdae accidently jabs Zitao in the eye with his ninja stick and Zitao freaks, crying about how he was going to be blind now. As Kris tries to calm him, Luhan finally catches Minseok and tackles him to the ground.

"YOU WILL BE MY BOYFRIEND," Luhan demands as poor Minseok squirms, trying to get away from the other's grip.

By this time, Zitao stops crying because of the spectacle in front of him. "I want a boyfriend, too."

 _You say that now_ , Kris thinks and he's about to tell him this when Yixing approaches.

"Look what I found!" he says proudly, holding his palm out.

It's the dead lizard Kris had threw out the window earlier.

Kris wants to die.

This time, he throws it out onto the street.

After that, he convinces everyone to go back inside so they could eat whatever food they had left. The ice cream was gone, and it turns out Minseok had not only eaten one but three cupcakes. But hey, at least they had the other seven cupcakes left. 

Snack time goes by more smoothly than Kris had expected. They didn't have time to fuss and such with their mouths stuffed with cake. Jongdae does spill his cup of juice, but after everything else that's happened Kris considers this to be mild.

The time was ticking away, and now there was only around thirty minutes before the party guests' mothers would start coming to take them away. Kris was secretly praying it would go by fast.

He had forgotten about Jongdae and Minseok's present and Yixing's card until Zitao brings it up, asking if it was time to open them yet. Kris, relieved that he had remembered, agrees and sends them off to the living room.

They were behaving quite well now that they had ate, arranging themselves into a semi circle on the carpet. A couple of them were yawning, and Kris wondered if it was from boredom or tiredness.

Zitao opens Yixing's card first. It's in the shape of a panda, Zitao's favorite animal, and even Kris has to admit it's cute. 

"YES!" Zitao yells, waving a hand that held $10. "Yixing is my new bestest friend."

Yixing grins happily, proud that he had earned such a good title. Jongdae whines, asking Zitao what happened to _him_ being his bestest friend, and Luhan clicks his tongue in disgust.

"My present was better," he says, glaring at Kris, the leader of the Anti Dead Lizard Committee.

Kris dismisses him, picking up the card Zitao had thrown onto the floor upon discovering the money. "Money is cool, but really the best thing about cards is the words inside." He explains but is ignored; Zitao has already started on unwrapping the other present.

But Minseok, who sat next to him, taps his knee. "I can't read many words yet. But I can spend money."

Kris says nothing.

Jongdae and Minseok's gift turns out to be an inflatable kids' punching bag. Kris, knowing that Zitao had recently gotten into martial arts, thinks it's a pretty cool gift. Zitao does too, because he goes back to yelling and appoints Jongdae and Minseok as his _bestest, bestest, bestest_ friends ever. Yixing, his title no longer that important, sulks. Luhan rolls his eyes.

"My present was still the best," he says.

Kris decides to let Zitao open the presents from himself and Junmyun later; he was sure his boyfriend would want to see his son's face when he opened them. Though he was sure that nothing was going to beat the punching bag.

After they whine and beg for him to blow the punching bag up, Kris convinces the boys to let him put the present away and watch television instead. There was no way he was gonna let them play with it so one of them could get a black eye and end up in the ER or something.

They're quiet now, their eyes glued to the animated picture in front on them. Kris is pleased with himself.

He does little things like clean up the kitchen, and heating up leftovers for dinner after everyone leaves. He was hungry for something other than cupcakes and juice, and he knew when Junmyun gets home after working all day he would be starving too.

When he sticks his head into the living room to take a peek at the boys, he's pleasantly surprised to see them still fixated on the television screen. Zitao and Jongdae was curled up on the sofa, the other three on the floor in front of them. Kris sees that Luhan is holding Yixing's hand and figures they must have gotten over their "relationship problems".

Six year olds these days.

He's in the middle of eating his heated dinner early in the kitchen when the doorbell rings. He does a silent cheer in his head when he opens it to see that it's Jongdae's mother.

She collects her son and Minseok, who was complaining about how he didn't want to go. Kris promises him that he could come back soon. 

((As long as Junmyun was there, though.))

Next is Luhan's mother. She hands Kris a small, wrapped box. 

"Luhan left his present for Zitao in the backseat," she explains.

"I don't like that present. I gave him my dead lizard instead." Luhan smiles proudly.

His mother groans. "Luhannie! I told you not to." She looks over at Kris, shaking her head. "I have the worst time with him. I was so surprised when I didn't get a call from you; usually whenever I leave him somewhere I get a complaint within five minutes."

Oh, so that was why these women kept giving Kris their numbers.

Slight disappointment.

And finally, instead of his mother, Yixing's father comes to retrieve him. Kris promises him that he could back, too; mostly because he was the one he had the least amout of trouble with today.

And then he was alone. Besides Zitao, of course.

"Tao?" Kris called him by his nickname, heading towards the kitchen. "Do you want some leftovers now or later?"

No answer. Sighing, he peeks again into the living room.

Zitao's still curled up on the couch, television on. Fast asleep.

Kris's heart melts a little. He had been dating Junmyun for six months now, and he didn't exactly know how he was going to be with his boyfriend's kid but he was starting to get really fond of Zitao. He might even love him like he was his own. A little.

Kris thought he had done the party thing for Junmyun, and maybe that was true but he was just now realizing he had also done it for Zitao, too. He had spent his own sixth birthday in the ER after breaking his arm from climbing a tree; maybe he didn't want Zitao to have a sucky birthday that didn't include his dad and a party.

 _I'm such a good person_ , Kris thinks.

So he lifts the boy up and carries him into his room. He lays him onto his bed gently, pulling the Kungfu Panda covers over his body. 

He's halfway out the doorway when he hears a small whisper. "Kris?"

Kris turns around to see a grinning Zitao, sat up in his bed. "Did I wake you?"

"No," Zitao giggles, covering his mouth with a hand. "I pretended. I like when you and Daddy carry me to bed."

Kris smiles, going back and sitting onto the bed. "Did you have a good time?"

Zitao nods. "It was the best."

"Really?" Kris couldn't hide his surprise. "It didn't suck? I mean, like you told me, I don't know anything about kids..."

Zitao shakes his head. "Daddy was wrong. You're fun."

Kris blinks. "Sure."

Giving Zitao a pat on the arm, he gets up then, making his way back out. 

Zitao stops him one more time. "You know how I said I wanted a boyfriend?"

Kris, not knowing where this was going, nods.

"Well, how about when I'm a grown up, you can be my boyfriend. You're really cool," he says.

Kris didn't know whether to be flattered or creeped out. "Uh, we'll see about that."

That's a good enough response for Zitao. "Okay, good night!"

"...Good night."

Later, when Junmyun asks him how the party goes, Kris thinks about the cupcakes and ninja fighting and the dead lizard and answers with one word.

"Fantastic."


End file.
